Reclaim the Street: Street Photography's Moment, by Stephen McLaren + Matt Stuart.

Reclaim the Street is the kind of book that makes you want to grab your camera and head straight outside. It looks like a beautifully printed coffee-table tome, but it reads like a hefty slab of inspiration—curated with real care by Stephen McLaren and Matt Stuart, two photographers who know the genre from the inside out.

At its core, the book is an ambitious attempt to capture the state of street photography today, and it succeeds brilliantly. Nearly forty photographers are profiled in depth, a mix of familiar names and exciting emerging voices. Each gets four or five images—just enough to understand their vision and sensibility. The writing is sharp and thoughtful without drifting into academic territory. McLaren and Stuart offer just enough context to orient you, then wisely step aside and let the images speak for themselves.

Threaded through the profiles are two smart structural features: “Collections,” which highlight ongoing photographic projects, and “Hotspots,” which zoom into cities and countries where street photography is thriving. These hotspot chapters are among the book’s most rewarding. McLaren and Stuart push far beyond the usual Western locations and spotlight scenes in Thailand, India, Brazil, Turkey, and more. These sections broaden the sense of what street photography looks like—and what it can be—far beyond the familiar sidewalks of New York or London.

That global scope is one of the book’s greatest strengths. Street photography is often treated as a Western invention; Reclaim the Street blows that notion apart. India, for example, is a goldmine for street work, and the images here from Swarat Ghosh and Vineet Vohra are both brilliant and energizing. I was also drawn to the Thai photographers—Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet (“Poupay”) with her surreal and sarcastic images, and Tavepong Pratoomwong, whose wry, impeccably composed photos are a delight.

I recently became obsessed with Sergio Larraín’s mid-century photographs of Valparaíso, so Eleonore Simon’s modern black-and-white work from the same port city really stood out. Her framing, unconventional crops, and bold angles feel like a contemporary echo of Larraín without being derivative. These photographers aren’t side notes; they’re central to the book’s argument that some of the most inventive, humanistic work in the genre is happening all over the world, in places buzzing with life.

The reproduction quality deserves praise. With more than 500 illustrations, the printing is superb. This is a coffee-table book that earns its physical heft. You don’t skim it; you sink into it.

Another welcome detail: the book is blissfully free of TikTok “street photographers,” YouTube hustlers, and Instagram stunt-performers posing as artists. This is the real deal—photographers who walk, watch, wait, and react, not people using the street as a backdrop for their own performative antics so they can accumulate as many “likes” as possible.

As a street photographer myself, what I appreciated most was the book’s optimism. Street photography can sometimes feel territorial or nostalgic, clutching at its past. Reclaim the Street argues the opposite: the genre is expanding, mutating, and thriving. In that sense, the subtitle—Street Photography’s Moment—feels less like marketing and more like a genuine observation. We may actually be living in the middle of that moment, watching it unfold in real time. I hope it’s true.